There's a guy in my neighborhood whose anti-Obama banners drape his fence and balcony as big and tacky as those going-out-of-business signs that cover store windows.

And sometimes I wonder, as I pass by each day, if he's trying to make up for the fact that his vote in the presidential race really doesn't matter.

As Texans, none of ours matters.

Where presidential politics are concerned, we don't swing. We stagnate. Texas' role in the presidential election is so inconsequential that our wealthy Republican donors are pouring their money into contests in other states, and national Democrats are urging Texas Latinos to stump in minority neighborhoods in places like Nevada and Colorado. When a presidential candidate does cross the Red River, they come to pick our pockets, not our brains.

In a state President Obama lost by 11 points in 2008, political junkies and concerned voters are relegated to watching the action from armchairs, or following stump speeches vicariously on YouTube.

This isn't a recent phenomenon, of course. Texas hasn't truly been "in play" since the '70s. Our transition from solid blue to solid red was as brief as some rush hour stop lights.

Sure, we are spared the avalanche of nasty campaign ads and the never-ending drone of media coverage on candidate visits. But in the process, we're also spared our say, our influence. Many Texans trudge to the polls loyally every four years and cast ballots like good straight-ticket soldiers, believing whether they've voted Republican or Democrat, they've done their good civic duty.

Road to irrelevance

But we should ask ourselves where that tunnel vision has gotten us, and whether it has actually cost us a place at the table. We can blame the archaic Electoral College system or we can do some deep thinking about how to get off the road to irrelevance.

Demographers and political scientists say this may happen naturally within a decade, due to the growing Hispanic population, which today tends to vote Democratic and in 2008 favored President Obama nearly 2-to-1. There are certainly those on the left who are salivating at this prospect.

But I'm not looking for a conversion so much as a conversation. A state not solidly, blindly, boringly blue, or red, but purple, even pink. An era where our votes aren't taken for granted, but earned the hard way.

Where even statewide races can be competitive. Where no governor is so comfortable, so entitled, that he can refuse to debate his opponent. Where the middle is a place to come together, not pick apart.

Jones thinks that by 2020, Texas could be in play depending on whether the Republican Party softens its rhetoric and tailors its message for Hispanic voters, and whether the Democratic Party massively improves its organization, mobilization and development of a credible stable of candidates across the state.

If Republicans don't evolve, for instance, and Democrats make advances, Texas will be "in play" in national presidential elections within the decade. And these would be exciting times.

"If Texas even remotely comes into play as a blue state, then the entire Electoral College map for Republicans falls apart," Jones says. "If it becomes a swing state, it just enormously complicates the task for Republicans."

The more complicated, the more we matter. The more we matter, the more candidates have to work for our votes.

But he pours cold water on my dream of a purple beacon of bipartisanship, a place where civil parties are willing to compromise, kind of like what Democratic leaders managed to do with former Gov. George W. Bush in the late '90s.

"I simply don't see that in Texas' future," Jillson says. More probable, he says, are deep divides and polarization. A rush of money from conservative donors would return to Texas in attempts to maintain GOP control and fend off Democratic gains.

We'd be more likely to resemble Wisconsin, going at each other's throats, than Ohio.

I hope not. But at least, even under that scenario, we'd have a voice, one that no presidential candidate could afford to ignore.